When you are the leading CMS platform in the world and the preferred online publishing platform for millions of businesses and loved by thousands of web developers and website designers, it’s inevitable that at some point in time, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.

In 2013, WordPress installations around the world were subjected to a worldwide brute force attack.

These attacks were caused by computer networks infected with viruses and programmed to attack other vulnerable sites, also commonly known as “botnets”.

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

About Brute Force Attacks

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

One of the many ways hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site is by trying to guess the site’s administration login username and password. This can be achieved with software programs and scripts that can guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using easy-to-guess usernames and passwords, your site can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” login attack.

What Are Botnets

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia)

A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that have been compromised and infected with malicious code or scripts, which are then controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners’ knowledge or awareness.

Botnets are typically used to blast mass spam emails from computers of unsuspecting users.

Below is a screenshot taken from an internet security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(The Zeus botnet has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Screenshot: SecureList.com)

These botnet attacks on WordPress are highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by several webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress site administration areas occurred. The attack then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked per day.

News of this mass brute force attack was reported by all of the major webhosting companiesand leading technology publications, such as TechNews Daily, Forbes, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, BBC News, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is often the target of malicious attacks by hackers)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

No. In fact, there are lots of great reasons why you should use WordPress if you are concerned about website security.

To learn why WordPress is a secure platform for websites, read this article: Is WordPress Secure?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of April 2013 worldwide brute force botnet attack described above, no specific WordPress vulnerability was being exploited (the same script was also attacking sites built using platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, made the following comment about the brute-force attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

Preventing Your WordPress Site From Being Brute Force Attacked – 10 Security Checks

Every website with a security vulnerability offers some value to hackers. A vulnerable web site not only provides hackers opportunities to improve their skills and claim “bragging rights” amongst their peers, but it can also be a valuable platform for DDoS attacks, spreading malware and as a source of information theft.

If a malicious user can find a security weakness, that site can then be used as a “bot” in a planned cyber-attack against larger and more highly-valued web sites.

Additional undesirable impacts of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include getting blacklisted by Google, having stealthy spam links advertising things like gambling, discounted fashion, etc. inserted in your content and page title and descriptions, redirecting visitors to phishing sites, drive-by downloads (adding malicious programs on your visitors’ computers), and lots of other nasty things.

The reality is that hackers are very likely looking for security weaknesses and trying to hack into your website while you are reading this. Whether they will break into your site successfully depends on how difficult you will make it for hackers to continue trying until they can work out a way to get in, or are forced to give up and go look for an easier target.

How Much Information About Your WordPress Site Are You Broadcasting To Hackers?

If you visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …

(Website Security Check Product image: Hackertarget.com)

You will see that the test will display a number of results and details about your site …

(WordPress security scan results. Image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can access all of this information, so can hackers.

(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories in your site can all be useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any vulnerabilities, especially in older versions.

If your site or blog is driven by WordPress and you are not proactive steps to bullet-proof your site, then we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these brute-force attacks are systematically hitting WordPress sites worldwide!

When a site gets compromised, webmasters will find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their files have been interfered with or even that their content has been entirely wiped out. Typically, compromised sites will become infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge or awareness.

To help avoid the heartache and frustration (and potential financial loss) that comes with discovering that your website has been hacked into, below are 10 simple, yet essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked by brute force hackers.

Note: Some of the recommended measures shown below need some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and/or server files. If you are not technical-minded, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or search for a WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Host

Contact your webhosting provider and ask them what security precautions have been put into place to protect your site from brute force attacks, and what is done to make sure that your site files are being backed up.

Check that your hosting company regularly backs up your server files and that, if anything should happen, you can quickly and easily recover your files and data.

Security Measure #2 – Back Up Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Regularly Updated

You should never rely just on your webhosting service for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain your WordPress site or get this service done for you and develop a habit of religiously performing a full WordPress site maintenance routine on a frequent basis (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are removed,
• All data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All WordPress themes, plugins and software components are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP website backed up and up-to-date is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain your WP site frequently backed up and updated. WP site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you don’t want to learn how to do WordPress maintenance yourself, pay a professional to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the second most important thing you should do after making sure that your heart is still beating!

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are a number of WordPress plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can automate your site backups here: Backup, Duplicate And Keep Your WordPress Sites Protected With Backup Creator Plugin For WP

Security Measure #3 – Make Sure That Your Username Is Not “Admin”

the worldwide brute force attack on WordPress is mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels by exploiting WP installations using “admin” as their account name.

For security purposes, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username “admin”. This is the first area hackers will test. If your site’s username is admin, change it immediately.

We have created a tutorial created especially for non-technical WP admin users on how to change your WordPress admin username here: How To Change Your WordPress Admin Username To A More Secure Username

Security Measure #4 – Choose Strong Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a username and password field with different character strings trying to guess the right combination that will give them entry to your site.

Unless you put some measure in place to prevent the brute-force attack (see further below for a couple of simple and effective suggestions for doing this), the “bot” will just persist in attacking your site until it eventually breaks into your admin area.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, are very easy targets for brute-force attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something containing at least 8 characters long, with upper and lowercase letters, and add a few “special” characters (e.g. ^, #, &, etc).

You can use a password management software tool like Roboform to generate secure passwords …

(You can use a password software tool like Roboform to generate unbreakable passwords)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your password, go here: Changing Your Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Access To The wp-config.php File

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(WordPress WP Config file)

If hackers break into your website, they will typically search for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow them to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent people from accessing your wp-config.php file. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Installation Files

Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files.

You can remove these files after installation. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Update Your WordPress Files, Plugins And Themes

Hackers search for vulnerabilities in previous versions of WordPress that they can exploit, including out-of-date versions of WP themes and plugins.

Make sure to always keep all of your software files, plugins, themes, etc. up-to-date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable The WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that allows administrators to edit plugin and theme code inside the dashboard area.

You can access your WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from the main menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin view and change your theme files, and cause mayhem on your site.

If you want to prevent people from accessing your WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by adding code to your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Protect Your Site’s Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” directory contains all the media files that get uploaded to your WordPress site.

By default, this folder is visible to online users. All someone has to do to view the contents stored in your site’s “uploads” folder is navigate to your directory using a web browser …

(WordPress uploads directory)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious users, someone can upload unauthorized file types or compromise the security of your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent online users from accessing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally a file with nothing in it named “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to use a professional if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – WordPress Security Plugins

There are some great security plugins for WordPress available that will address most common security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious exploits, preventing unauthorized file uploads, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One security plugin that does a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing potential issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP security software solution)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and addresses most of the security areas that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to look at using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Solution

(Blog Defender)

This product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where the security weaknesses in your website are …

And then shows you how to quickly fix these …

If you don’t want to purchase a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, you can use various free plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a secure web platform, but neglecting basic maintenance tasks like making sure that your WP software, plugins and WP themes are kept updated to their latest versions, tightening file and data protection and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.

As a final reminder of the importance of website security, below is the advice given by an expert on web security to all WordPress users after the large-scale brute-force attacks on WordPress in 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

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As you can see, website security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, the information in this article has provided you with the initial steps you need to take to keep your WordPress site protected from brute force attacks. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a professional WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress technical provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

We also recommend subscribing to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications whenever we publish new articles and tutorials on WordPress security and tutorials about WordPress security plugins.

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